Mike Haskew

Editor’s note: Follow BLADE on Instagram here. Also, anyone buying or selling knives online should take caution when doing so on a social media platform. Recent events have singled out “weapons” content, and Instagram (owned by Facebook) is likely to be no exception. Diversification is key. Remember: In-person knife shows are still the best bet for buying/selling safely and securely. 

Instagram Knife Pictures Help Knifemakers Sell and Knife Collectors Buy

A wave of Instagram commerce is building in the knife industry, and there is no indication of a slowdown at this point. Those who have leveraged the platform have seen increased activity that otherwise might have required hours and expenses associated with travel, marketing and promotion.

“The impact on the knife community is significant,” Curtis Iovito of Spartan Blades commented. “I can say that this year we have reached more prospective customers and knife lovers than we have on Facebook based on customer responses. It truly is a mix of social responses, providing information and assisting prospective buyers. Instagram has started allowing businesses to sell via the platform, and we plan to do this soon. Sixty-four percent of sales for us are from mobile platforms, so we see this as a plus.”

“I had to come out of the stone age to get with the program, and it has doubled or tripled my business,” asserted knifemaker and BLADE® field editor Kim Breed. “You can put your wares out there for sale, and people comment or order and everything else on one simple site. You can go straight to your cell phone and post pictures and get immediate feedback.”

Purveyor Neil Ostroff of True North Knives started an Instagram account as a social tool to connect with friends, family and customers, but it soon became apparent that an additional sales tool was at his disposal. He changed his account from his personal name into the True North Knives (TNK) brand. He monitors how posts are received by the public, using the “View Insights” option for real-time metrics.

“As Instagram and other social media platforms are constantly evolving and getting better, I’m finding that Instagram is the easiest to use and provides the most results,” Neil explained. “An example of a result is getting a direct message, e-mail or phone call asking for more information about the product. Although we only post knives that are immediately available for online purchase, it’s always nice to have some practical contact with the buyer. We take pride in our knife images, whether they’re taken by a professional like Jim Cooper or our excellent in-house team. If the picture is not top rate, then it reflects badly on the product.”

More Than Just Knife Pictures

Breed points out that advertising in most any format is expensive. Knife pictures posted on Instagram allow immediate access to potential buyers at virtually no cost.

“Putting yourself out there to hundreds of thousands of people is powerful,” he noted. “If they’re looking for a knife, as soon as they search for custom knife or damascus, all sorts of stuff pops up to choose from.”

 

had to stop working on orders to get this finished for a brother for his next trip. military come first on my list. thank you for understanding. #breedcustomknives #huntingknives #kitchenknives #woodhandledknives #skinningknives #carbonfiber #ancienthandles #neckknives #fingerknives #Damascus #damascusknives #edcknives #camping #outdooradventure #survivalgear #survival #ferrorods #backpacking #njsb #blade_magazine #kimbreed #hunting #kimbreed1911

A post shared by Kim Breed (@kimbreed1911) on May 11, 2018 at 10:18am PDT

Kim refuses to hard sell on the platform. “Buyers just ask ‘how much?’ and it is a process of direct messaging between you and that person,” he said. “Some people post prices out there and everything has a different price to it. [Costs of knife- making supplies] have gone up 20 to 25 percent this year. If you’ve got old stock maybe you can keep prices lower, but if it’s newer stock you’ve got to pass the cost on. People will message me if they’re interested in something and then we talk price.”

After seven or eight months on Instagram, Kim sees an unlimited future for the platform.

“All the stuff you’ve posted from when you first started [on Instagram] is out there,” he observed. “So, you don’t have to continually post the same kind of knife. Just as you make them you can throw them up on Instagram.”

Instagram Cautionary Tales

Though social media is asserting itself in the TNK sales process, Ostroff is warily watching developments. His website is still king with his business at this point.

“In spite of Instagram’s popularity and audience, for True North Knives our website still takes in 90 percent of our sales,” he added. “As with any other shopping-cart-based website, the purchase is triggered by the photos, but then we offer a smooth and easy way to select, pay and order the knife. Instagram does not do that. It merely brings the product to the subscribers but then the hunt begins, and many potential buyers must go through many steps trying to contact the knifemaker, who may or may not be available to take an order.”

 

Michael Zieba S1 Mini TNK Freedom Collection V2- Sprint Run. Bronze Skull Backspacer . Zieba Exclusive Bottle Opener. Patented Angel Wing- USPTO Reg #5,278,562 Link in bio for website.

A post shared by True North Knives (@truenorthknives) on Feb 20, 2018 at 1:13pm PST

Another caution from Ostroff is that Instagram provides any seller with an “escape hatch” to sell a knife to anyone and not necessarily the first customer who steps up to buy. When a traditional e-commerce website operates, the item for sale is listed and directly connected to actual inventory; once it is sold it is gone and marked as out of stock. “Fair game for all!” he said.

“Many knifemakers on Instagram are only offering their knives for sale by lottery or raffle. As I don’t buy knives from Instagram I feel sorry for the people who aren’t always ‘attached to’ their phones, and also don’t have the money to, in many cases, overpay for knives due to the hype,” Neil related. “Many knives are sold at grossly inflated prices by knifemakers who are merely looking for the quick buck with no regard for a potential secondary market”—a secondary market that will never come about when the initial/primary purchase price is way too high.

Still, the luster of Instagram has drawn custom makers, purveyors and purchasers to the platform like moths to a flame.

 

This is an oldie dagger called Definity. #bertierieveldknives #customknivesofinstagram #knivesofig #bertierietveld #dragonskindamascus

A post shared by Bertie Rietveld (@bertierietveld) on Jun 23, 2018 at 3:33am PDT

“Initially, the knifemakers get a large audience, not only from active buyers but also from fans who may not be able to afford these knives but who really enjoy seeing the blade—like eye candy,” Ostroff said. “Knifemakers should assign or hire others to manage their account after knives are posted. Potential clients have questions, most of which never get answered by the knifemaker.”

According to Breed, payment is sometimes a sticky proposition. “When people talk with the knifemaker they should use common sense,” he remarked. “Like the internet, Instagram is a great thing, but it can be ugly at the same time. I let a guy place his order, and when I get close to sticking the handle on [the knife], then he needs to pop a check in the mail. Others pay with Paypal as soon as they order a knife, but some want to see what the finished product looks like.”

Mixed Signals?

No, simply an assessment of the pros and cons of a growing medium in the knife industry, one that cannot be ignored and likely will never go away.

“You almost have to get on Instagram,” Breed offered. “The younger generation that was raised on it will be jumping on other sites, too. I get on the computer once or twice a week because I’m spending most of my time making knives. Instagram is nice because it’s on your phone. If you’re grabbing lunch out or in your shop, you can have a brand new knife posted in less than two minutes and can follow up on what is happening with it.”

However, the traditional opportunity to hold the real knife in your hand is diminished. Buying from knife pictures has its own risks. The situation is always improved when buyer and seller really know one another. Time will tell how Instagram truly changes the buying/selling process.

Follow on Instagram

Hop onto Instagram and follow these accounts:

• BLADE
• Kim Breed
• Spartan Knives
• True North Knives
• Bertie Rietveld

BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame® member Pete Gerber knew he was onto something with the FS1, a knife he remembers as “dandy” and one of three in the Folding Sportsman line that debuted with Gerber Legendary Blades beginning sometime around 1980.

“It was just a little heavy,” Pete recalled. “Blackie Collins was working with us on some projects then, and I asked him for help with it. I said, ‘Blackie, this is a nice knife. How can we take some weight out of it and put some pizzazz into it?’”

The knife engineers at Gerber Legendary Blades had been working with Micarta handle slabs, rather labor intensive at the time since the plastic laminate had to be machined to the appropriate shape.

“We had to mill it out and used brass washers with rivets to attach the slabs,” Pete said. “The original LST was the FS1 in-house design, and Blackie was first given the assignment to put moxie into it using the existing parts. He worked on the design and then put an injection-molded handle on it with nice checkering. Those were his contributions.”

As fine as it was, as long as the slab handles were involved the LST had trouble fully living up to the attributes that provided its name, “Light, Smooth, and Tough.” Collins already had contributed some well-known designs to Gerber, including the Bolt Action folder and the Touché belt buckle knife, and the wheels began to turn in his head.

Blackie had a friend in Gastonia, North Carolina, just outside Charlotte, and that friend ran an injection-molding business. Instead of using riveted slabs as handle material, why not try a one-piece injection-molded handle to reduce both the weight and production cost of a knife design that was already selling pretty well? Just to add to the incentive, injection molding would open up the spectrum of handle colors as well.

After some experimentation, the production LST was manufactured with the glass-filled, nylon-reinforced Zytel as the handle material.

“It was the first time a folding knife was made with a one-piece handle, and it worked,” Pete remembered. “The action was so smooth because we went through an operation called ‘match catch,’ where the blade and the catch were kept together until they were assembled and until they were just perfect. When the knife closed, the blade referenced the catch, and it was as smooth as it could be.”

A New Car for a New Knife

Almost as sweet as the story behind the LST, which has sold in the millions since the early 1980s, is the back-story of Blackie’s compensation for his input that led to the dynamic little knife’s eventual success. Pete asked Blackie what he wanted in the way of payment for services rendered.

“I didn’t think it could be a royalty knife since it was a modified in-house design,” Gerber explained. “I asked what he wanted for payment, and I suggested that maybe a new car would be something he would like.”

The story goes that the new car turned out to be a Corvette and that Pete’s check for $29,000 made it happen.

Blackie, a Cutlery Hall Of Famer who tragically lost his life in a motorcycle accident in 2011, loved cars and motorcycles and just about anything mechanical, and the idea of new wheels appealed to him. His wife, Jane, remembers well the search for just the right vehicle.

“We went from South Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida, to look at Avanti cars,” she recalled. “He didn’t like the way the new ones handled, so we looked at Corvettes, bought one that was two-tone gold, and drove it home. He owned that car for a few years and then traded it in.”

Pete remembers Collins driving around his hometown in South Carolina in that Corvette with a license plate that simply read, “Blackie.”

Offering items other than money for consulting seemed to work well for Pete, who also once paid Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Bob Loveless with an airplane.

While Blackie burned up the roads in the Corvette, the Gerber-Collins partnership took the knife market by storm with the LST.

“Blackie used to say that the LST revolutionized the knife industry,” Jane recalled. “He did a lot of work for Gerber, and he really reduced the number of parts on that knife and put the plastic handle on it to make it lighter.”

Taking the World By Storm

The new lightweight knife was a sensation, and soon other knife companies were taking notice, working on something similar. It was pure gold in itself—with a grand total of six parts to the whole enterprise. Buyers wanted the light, smooth-action, durable and reasonably priced LST, and competitors scrambled to keep pace with Gerber’s trendsetter.

Soon enough, there were similar offerings rolling off assembly lines and onto store shelves. The introduction of LST energized knife manufacturers in a manner seldom seen.

The LST developed its own legacy among the knives that changed knife history, and it is still being manufactured in Portland, Oregon, and sold under the Gerber banner today.

“It was the first true ultralight knife,” explained Dan Delavan of Plaza Cutlery in Costa Mesa, California, “and Gerber had a high-quality blade in that light handle at a good price. You could throw it in the pocket of your swim trunks and go! Lightweight became attractive, and the LST was thin, too. It didn’t bulge in a suit pocket and the checkering gave it a nice grip, just like an extension of the finger. It was the knife that introduced the ultralight, and we sold a lot of them back in the day.”

Lightweight vs. Airweight

Contemporary to the introduction of the LST, Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer A.G. Russell was producing ultralight knives of his own in the Airweight series. Like other knife manufacturers and designers, Russell also worked with Blackie.

He remembers the concept of the ultralight as the shape of things to come in the 1970s.

“I wanted strength but little weight in a knife, too,” Russell noted, “and my Airweight was using a Micarta handle. Blackie had that great idea of molding the handle instead of shaping it, which would have suited an operation like Gerber perfectly. The LST was extremely lightweight and it sold in the millions.”

LST Materials

Pete Gerber recalls using 440A stainless blade steel in the early LST, and says the knife had a good, husky blade that he never saw break—and it was complemented with a nicely polished tang.

“Many other companies were copying it, trying to figure out what we did and how the LST worked so well,” Pete said. “Many of those companies made knives that were quite similar to the LST long after ours was successful. I don’t believe we had a patent on it at all; I don’t think we could get one. The patent area was out of my expertise, but I told our folks to get one whenever we could.”

An Enduring Legacy

After almost 40 years, the staying power of the LST is undisputed, and its place as a milestone in the progressive development of knife design is secure. Along with other innovations attributed to Blackie, it stands out among its peers with a timeless depiction of design sense and simple user friendliness.

During the past four decades, the LST has been manufactured in several variants.

DuPont recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of its nylon plastic with a commemorative run of LSTs handled in the company’s Delrin material.

Not long ago, Pete was in a company store in Lincoln City, Oregon, and one of the clerks showed him a Mini LST with a bright green handle.

“I had never seen that bright green before,” Gerber laughed. “It just goes to show you that things can develop that you don’t even know about.”

When the LST hit the market in 1981, the time was right. Since then, it has given Gerber and the knife industry a continuing boost.

“It has sold in the seven figures,” Pete reflected, “and I think it gave us a hell of a shot in the arm.”

Gerber LST Specs

The standard LST sells today on the Gerber company website for a modest $23. The knife weighs a remarkable 1.2 ounces with a drop-point 420HC stainless steel blade of 2.63 inches and a closed length of 3.61 inches. The handle is described as tactile, textured and made of lightweight, synthetic glass-filled nylon.

Light, smooth, and tough, Gerber’s LST has earned its place among the elite products of the modern knife industry.

What Other Knives Changed the World? Find Out With This Download

Too often, it seems, the mediocre is celebrated. Descriptive terms like “legendary” and “timeless” are handed out with reckless abandon. But few would argue that the terms are fitting when applied to BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member R.W. “Bob” Loveless and the dropped hunter.

Also known as the drop-point hunter or simply the drop point, the knife grabbed the attention of the world of knives more than half-a-century ago and has remained in the limelight ever since.

“Bob Loveless didn’t invent the drop point but he sure made it popular,” remembered longtime merchant, knife advocate and Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer A.G. Russell. “Loveless was different. Loveless was magic. When his knives sold for $650 and other makers’ knives sold for $200, he said his knife was worth $200 but the mark was worth $450.”

Russell points to an article that appeared in Guns & Ammo magazine in the 1960s. It thrust Loveless and his custom knives, along with those of Harry Morseth and Merle Seguine, to the forefront.

“It made Loveless the most renowned knifemaker in America,” A.G. recalled. “In handmade patterns nobody surpassed Loveless’s drop point. Not just because it was copied, but everybody was copying it—kind of like the Randall Model 1 was copied.

“It wasn’t his best or most useful model. It was simply the most popular. His best was the semi-skinner, with a better point and belly,” Russell opined.

Global Impact of Loveless Knives

John Denton is one of the world’s foremost authorities on Loveless knives.

He has been an avid collector for decades and a purveyor of Loveless knives for many years, following in the footsteps of his late father and purveying legend J.W. Denton.

“The first time I saw a drop-point hunter was in BLADE® Magazine in the ’80s,” he recalled. “If you didn’t get BLADE Magazine, you did not know about anything in the knife world. Also, it seems that every time I liked a knife I saw in a photo I would read below it, and it would say, ‘made by R.W. Loveless.’ So there must have been something special if a photo catches you over and over in books and magazines.”

Loveless and his knives were immensely popular in Japan, and Denton surmises that the drop point was the catalyst for the Loveless explosion in the Asian market.

“The fact is that the drop point was meant to be a using tool, just like Hamada Pottery. It was utilitarian and useful. That’s the reason he was so huge in Japan, his simple design, and nothing was wasted, and the fact that it was so well balanced in the hand—never square—so that you did not feel any [unnecessary] sharp surface when working with it. Pure brilliance!”

Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer B.R. Hughes met Loveless through A.G. Russell, who had met Bob a year earlier while on a tour in 1967 that included stops at the shops of several custom knifemakers, including Loveless’s in California.

“I first saw a Loveless drop-point hunter in the dead of winter in 1968,” Hughes smiled, “when my good friend A.G. Russell called and told me that he was hosting a California maker named R.W. Loveless, who was doing some pretty special stuff with his knives, and invited me to come up for a visit.”

The roads between Hughes’ home in Texarkana, Texas, and Russell’s business in Arkansas were covered with snow at the time, but Hughes prevailed on a friend, Bill Murdock, who owned a plane and flew him over to the airport in Fayetteville.

“A.G. and Bob picked us up at the airport, and we drove to a small diner, where we had coffee and ate,” Hughes recalled. “Bob laid out several of his knives on the table and he talked. I was most impressed with the workmanship and the design of the knives, notably the extremely thinly ground blades, the full tangs, the handle design, and the tapered tangs. The overall workmanship was some of the best I had seen up to that point. Indeed, the only knifemaker of that period I would say was comparable in terms of workmanship would have been D.E. Henry.”

Loveless evidently struck a chord when he revived an old design and added his personal touch. The result was an utter phenomenon. His authorship was unmistakable and his mark became prized the world over.

“The drop point is not hard to make,” Denton noted. “Loveless told me that he did not like making sub-hilts because by the time he made one sub-hilt he could have made 10 or more drops. But that’s what makes his double grinds so nice. They are rare and took time to make. But Bob said 90-percent plus of his production was some sort of hunter, and of those, [mostly] the drop. He went years sometimes never making a Big Bear [sub-hilt].

“Bob is most likely the best designer to ever produce a knife, as design after design was just right,” Denton continued, “the Big Bear, the boot, New York Special, Hideouts, Chute knives. All amazing. He is much like the Ferrari of the knife world. He did it so well that everyone copies it and wants to make a drop-point hunter when they start out making knives, or they want to certainly own one if they collect knives. I just recently sold a Loveless knife to rock legend Eric Clapton. So, Loveless designs are known all over the globe.”

According to Denton, Loveless started making hunting knives in the 1950s and conceived his additions to the genre.

From there, John says, the rest is history. By the 1970s and ’80s, Schrade, Gerber and Beretta were among the companies offering reproductions of the drop-point hunter, so the knife’s influence captured the mass-production market as well.

Bob Loveless: Larger than Life

Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer D’ Holder treasures his personal relationship with the late Loveless.

“I had seen Loveless drop points in several magazines in the late ’60s,” Holder said, “but saw my first up close and real in 1973. Dan Dennehy was raising money for his move to Del Norte, Colorado, and had a Loveless drop point on his gun show table for sale. It was at the Yuma, Arizona, gun show and he was asking $125. It had stag handles and a gold escutcheon on top of the blade with [Loveless’s] name engraved in it. On the side of it was engraved, ‘To my good friend Dan, from Bob.’”

D’ bought the knife that day and owned it for 15 years before selling it to Al Williams, a renowned Loveless collector, for $1,800. Holder says he should have kept it and that it would bring at least $10,000 today.

“I would sit in my easy chair and fondle that knife for hours trying to figure out what was so special,” D’ mused. “I never came up with a clear answer other than it was a Loveless.”

For years, D’ stopped by Bob’s Riverside, California, shop while on his way to one of the West Coast knife shows.

They exchanged varying opinions of topics of the day, and even when those opinions diverged they shook hands and looked forward to the next visit.

“The last time we had our usual discussion and it came time to leave, I extended my hand as always,” Holder said, “and he brushed it aside and gave me a big hug, and told me how much he appreciated the visits. Several years later he came to Phoenix and spent the day with me in my shop. It was one of the highlights of my career. He was a perfect gentleman. I miss the opportunity to visit with him. I miss his personality, his gruff exterior and his friendship.”

Hughes agrees that the drop point was not the most difficult knife to make, but its impact has been enormous. He recalls Loveless taking a moment during that first meeting at the diner in Arkansas, running the edge of one of his knives against pressure. As he moved it, the edge actually rippled, something B.R. had never seen before.

“Subsequent events indicated that it was not too difficult to turn out knives of this style and quality,” Hughes remarked, “because in a relatively short span of time at least half the stock-removal knifemakers in America were turning out pretty close copies of Loveless knives. He had an instant impact on knifemaking, almost overnight. My article on Loveless and his knives appeared sometime later in the long defunct GUNsport Magazine, of which I was shotgun editor at the time. Other articles appeared in other gun magazines. Remember, there was no BLADE, no Knives Illustrated in those days.”

In the pantheon of great custom knifemakers, Hughes says the knives of Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Bo Randall were the most copied until Loveless came along. Then Loveless and Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Bill Moran became the most influential cutlers in America and perhaps the world.

“Moran virtually singlehandedly saved bladesmithing from extinction, and Loveless transformed stock-removal knifemaking,” he concluded. “Anyway, that is my take.”

The drop-point hunter stands out among the rest because of the times, the look, the feel, the mark, and of course, the source of it all—larger than life—Bob Loveless himself.

Discover the Secrets to Bob Loveless’s Knives